Sovera

I'm interested, never stop babbling, Red! I don't really agree with some of your slotting (personal opinion), mostly Heavy Burst. I'm not as fussed about range, and don't see the point in slotting for -defense when we already are so deep in accuracy (even barely slotted Heavy Burst has 231% accuracy, and I vaguely recall +4 (I think) requiring 195% to 'softcap' accuracy), while also going on thinking that a single hard target is where -res shines and a cone AoE is not something we spam on a single hard target but rather our ST attack chain, so the -res would look better in Single Shot. Single Shot and Burst are pretty much interchangeable since both recharge so fast that we can make an attack chain with just those two. I also vaguely recall you saying you placed your IOs at level 27 for exemplar friendliness, but with the advent of attuned IOs where the IOs and their bonus are available since the moment that they can be slotted why do you still put up with the diminished stats of hard locking to 27 even when at level 50?

There are some things that require a tanker, like that Recluse tanking. But most of the game, the other 90%, does not *require* a tank and your peevishness, while understood because you play a tank and love the tank role, has no room in it. My half slotted blaster 'tanked' all of the Tina arc where we eventually face Anti-Mater. We started as eight, then people dropped and eventually I was just taking point. At the end one of my squishy(er) team mates said how they were doubtful since we were doing +4 and had no meat shield, but all had gone well barring one death of mine. There is not much 'tanking' needed when a blaster annihilates a pack with their T9, and then the next pack uses the Aim + BU they saved + regular AoEs to annihilate that pack. We can follow pretty after the tank but eight people trying to kill one pack is something that has no point currently when just one single person kills it. It's just eight people trying to squeeze in a hit before everything is dead, and most of the time just animating hitting a corpse since the target already died.

I'm surprised so many seem to think Freedom Phallanx is such a grind. I've yet to reach level 50 and not have all the requirements except the explorations and Nemesis. Just now with my new 50 and I was looking at it, and yeah, gear smasher, tank buster, slayer, etc etc. The only slog is the exploration that can be skipped by going red, but we are going to explore anyway for the other three accolades. Nemesis is doing the first mission of the TF four times at about five minutes per run killing only Fake Nemesis.

FS boosts all damage, with the exception of procs.

I can tell already you won't have enough endurance, and Metabolic Acceleration won't do much for your CC resistance needs. I leveled with MA and I can tell you I barely notice it is there in terms of CC resistance. There is always Clarion for the CC but then you won't have Ageless for the big endurance problems I predict. Agility may look like it will help but recovery just goes from 4.22 to 4.65. *With* MA six slotted with Efficacy *and* a performance shifter in Stamina, plus an extra endurance IO, plus Panacea and Miracle in Health even so my endurance goes does to half after each pack. This is with eight toggles though, if you have less than those it may be fine. You'll probably want to take the fourth LotG IOs, probably the extra one in CJ as well, and slot MA better (two basic level 50 health and two endurance mod IOs with all four being +5 will max MA). Definitely run it over Justin for a test. You can save one slot in Hasten if you +5 the other two. It does add one extra second to become 124 seconds instead of 123. But it could go to Spiderlings and make it four Expedient Reinforcement which lowers Hasten down to 122 seconds. You could switch the sets in Inferno and Atom Smasher, then remove one of the purples and replace it for a Fury of the Gladiator -res . If you're hitting a single tough target you're going to want to use Inferno, but with 3 second cast time you probably won't be single targeting something tough with Atom Smasher. Since you'll be using Aim + BU with Inferno the -res going off will be feeding your empowered ST chain after Inferno goes off. Panacea gives more recovery than Miracle in Health. Consult this guide.

No one here is going to tell you to play a Sentinel instead of a Blaster, because these are the blaster forums and those who are here do so because they love the AT. ... that said my Rad/Ninja Sentinel is more of a blaster than my Rad/Atomic blaster is. The difference between having our T9 every 25 seconds instead of 40 seconds is the difference between starting every fight with half a pack dead and the rest limping or go to face them naked and with a smile. I'll post my build in a short while and, yes, once after having reached 50, and having sunk three quarters of a billion into it, and having T4, yes, it's a beast with quadruple procs on two our of three ST attacks and softcapped defenses to all but energy and psi. Much more raw damage than the Sentinel too, but if we had something like Recount on CoH to see how much damage everyone did at the end of the TF I wonder how far apart my Sentinel and my Blaster would be. That said a quarter billion isn't particularly onerous to achieve and with double XP reaching level 50 isn't particularly difficult either.

Yes, listen, if you want to test the worth of it just roll a character on justin and test it with and without procs against a pylon. Gut feelings aren't very accurate. On my Sentinel the triple proc version downed a pylon in 4 minutes. The same build but replacing the procs for a normal slotting did it in six minutes.

I preferred radiation or elec for AoE godlyness. Lightning Field does tie the knot nicely, but the mass immobilize, I find, only really works for farming. In regular teams it hardly ever finds use. For solo farming it serves to keep the mobs close though.

I've played several Sentinels and now I'm trying a blaster, and i have to say that Sentinel is really really top notch for a player who wants to be durable and do pew pews. The blaster I'm trying now does stupid amounts of damage and with having a Aim and Build-up completely surpasses the Sentinel, but good grief, go into melee, get stunned, stun wears off, prepare to continue, get slept. In the meanwhile damage is flying and we are squishy. I mean, yes, once I am level 50, and once I have incarnates, and once I've sunk half a billion minimum, then boom, watch my blaster tear through content! But in the meanwhile the Sentinel's nuke recharges in 25 seconds, not 40, so it's up every spawn, or at most every second spawn, where the blaster's omgwtfbbq nuke is up every two spawns, possibly every three. It makes a *lot* of difference to start combat each time having killed all minions and hurt all lieutenants. We have just cut down damage in half. In the case of T9s with CC effects the mobs still alive are staggering and not retaliating. I was exemplaring to play with a friend of mine who has a stalker and the poor thing barely had anything to do despite having increased the number of mobs to +2x6. We'd reach a pack, I'd T9, almost everything died. Now, I'm pretty bias for ninjutsu. It has almost SR levels of defense but also a heal and an endurance recovery power which SR sorely lacks. No heal means relying on inspirations or trying to use Aid Self which isn't very good with the interrupts stopping it. If you look a bit further below I have a radiation/Ninjutsu build bent towards AoE. Feel free to pick it up and since all the defense is from ninjutsu you can replace the primary for anything you'd like without impacting the build's defenses.

Shh!

Doing that would make them very very nice to have in the low levels. We can always respec out of them later on, but starting the grind, no endurance, long moments without anything to press. City of Cooldowns was a name back in Live for this reason.

Well, as someone who just came from Justin I can say it's not quiteeeee as portrayed here. The only thing lacking was turning my IOs into superior versions and having incarnates (Justin's new about-to-go-live version turned off incarnates and free merits for reasons), but HD showed the difference between superior and normal versions as one point in endurance cost. @HelenCarnate had a good tip regarding using influence to buy merits which saved the day. I'm still without incarnates but at least I could test the character further. So, I was testing a Rad/Atomic and had Metabolic Acceleration slotted with five Panacea and the Performance Shifter proc. Stamina with another Performance Shifter proc plus an endurance IO, Health with the Miracle and Panacea proc. It took only two packs in a fire farm to be nearly empty but I'm running 8 toggles. I switched the Panacea and the Performance Shift for six Efficacy and its better. Still going to half endurance but it recharges well enough. Pity about hte loss of the regen/panacea since without a heal I sort of expect to lean on the regen. Perhaps Musculature with the endurance recovery boost + not running Tough and Assault will be enough to tip the scales.

I believe that this is easy to replicate since it always happens in the same fashion: If someone is level 8 (minimum level for Posi 1) as they start the TF then the whole party and the enemy NPCs stay at level 8 for the duration even if the leader keeps on leveling past level 8 during the TF. Easy to test and see this. Then Doc Buzzsaw spawns as a level 15 and everyone is level 8 making it a +7 EB. The TF is a bust since we cannot hurt it. This forces a disband and do it all over again. Since we no longer are level 8 we now have ours and enemy NPC scaling working as it should and Doc Buzzsaw spawns correctly. As someone who does one DFB to reach level 8 and then start with Posi 1 this happens a LOT until I figured it out. The trick is just to pass leadership to someone who is not minimum level. I forgot to do it today. So we are restarting it and in the interim I'm finally posting about this.

You're a smart cookie, Helen! Now we just lack a slash command to give veteran experience, since veteran levels give a bunch of crafting materials it would solve the problem for the pre-release cycles.

We need a merit slash command like we have one for influence.

This allows to slot the defense IOs into Enforcers and etc. Dump Pines/Mids as they were prototypes for Hero Designer.

Great news. I wish it had been a bit more apparent though. Or just easier to find. But Bopper to the rescue!

An off-shot question. A Force Feedback: chance for recharge, does it work on KB/KD immune targets? Does it only go off the animation happen? Does it happen if the KB/KD chance happen even if the target's immunity then prevents the animation from happening?

You should check the builds already posted on the forums then. The AoE Beast doesn't, for example.

We should team sometime.

As long as they match my T9 it's fine. I just pop it before my nuke for more nuke on my nuke. But yeah, otherwise all my builds only take Aim at level 30 for that reason, it's the only time I feel worth using it.

Can't they? There is a chat saving option in the Windows option. Slotting procs into glue attacks and stuff is just hmmm for me. I mean, perhaps as a filler. But as rule if I'm AoEing something I'm throwing damage AoEs, not CCs. Controllers, sure, it is their job to throw CC and the ones playing controllers relish it.

Storm does a bunch of damage. Thugs does a bunch of damage. You puts thugs and storm together and they do bunches of damage.

Throw it at Justin and tell us how it went.

Try the latest and dispose of the Pines/Mids prototypes: